Preparing for re-entry

In a few days we return to Northern Ireland for our six-month Home Assignment. Everyone keeps asking us are we excited? What’s the first thing we are going to do? What food are we most looking forward to eating? Who are we most looking forward to seeing?

In short: Yes, have a long hot bath, mature cheddar cheese, and everyone.

But naturally we are quite sad and nervous too. While we are going home to friends and family that we have really missed, we have made new friends and family here and are going to sorely miss them as well. As the ladies in my craft group lamented when I said I was only going away for six months – not forever; ‘Ah but 6 months is a long time!’

A few days ago I sat down with our housekeeper, Harriet to explain the details of us leaving. After going through everything I asked her if she had any questions. Her reply: ‘I’m going to miss you.’ My heart broke and my mind flashed with harebrained schemes of how to smuggle her back to Northern Ireland with us. Needless to say I am going to miss her terribly. Not just because we are going to have to iron our own clothes for the next six months, but because she has become our family. So leaving her is as hard as leaving my mum and dad, sister, nieces and nephews was.

And we are nervous too. We know there is going to be major culture shock but also a lot has changed since we left. We will be meeting 22 new babies as our friends and family have felt the call to repopulate the earth in the last 30 months. Most of our favourite shops have closed down. Our church has changed buildings. Friends have got married to people we haven’t even met. There is going to be a lot to get our heads around.

And we have changed too. Physically there are more grey hairs and wrinkles but emotionally and spiritually I wonder are we totally different people to those who left Belfast City Airport on 12th January 2011.

Change is always hard to deal with but without it we never move forward, we never grow. God has taught us so much during our first term here in Uganda, but there is even more he wants to teach us during our time back in NI. So while returning home is a little terrifying we are excited about what God is going to do… and about eating a lot of cheese!

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